Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters has now killed more than 3,000 people, as the Islamic regime clings to power while facing its most serious challenge in decades, according to human rights groups.

At least 3,090 deaths, including 2,885 protesters, have been verified by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency since demonstrations erupted across Tehran.

Other tallies are even more alarming — as separate reports warn the true death toll could be much higher.

Sources inside Iran estimate at least 12,000 — and possibly as many as 20,000 — people may have been killed during the national unrest, according to CBS News.

Tehran has fiercely disputed the numbers, blaming the bloodshed on what it calls “armed rioters” and “terrorists” backed by foreign powers, including the US and Israel.

The protests, which exploded on Dec. 28, spread rapidly across all 31 provinces, morphing from demonstrations over a collapsing economy into the most serious threat to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The regime answered with overwhelming force, deploying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Basij militia to crush the unrest, according to rights groups and witness accounts.

Monitors say security forces opened fire on crowds, hunted protesters street by street and flooded detention centers, while families were pressured into silence and hospitals were restricted from releasing information.

As the killings mounted, authorities imposed a near-total internet blackout on Jan. 8, plunging Iran into digital darkness for more than eight days — a move widely seen as an effort to hide the massacre and prevent images from spreading outisde of the country.

Graphic footage that surfaced despite the shutdown showed rows of bodies piled inside and outside morgues, including at Tehran’s Kahrizak forensic center, as desperate families searched for missing relatives amid threats and intimidation.

The carnage nearly triggered a war with the US, as President Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare military strike options after reports that Iran was planning mass executions — including that of a 26-year-old protester — before the White House abruptly pulled back when Tehran reportedly paused the hangings.